Postpartum University® Podcast

EP 186 How to Naturally Increase Fertility Through Your Postpartum Recovery with Tenáj Ikner

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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What if addressing unresolved trauma and nutritional deficiencies could unlock your body's full potential for a successful pregnancy?

In this episode of the Postpartum University Podcast, Maranda is joined by Tenáj Ikner, a certified perinatal doula and expert in perinatal health, to explore how detoxing and nutrient replenishment before conception can significantly boost fertility, minimize the risk of pregnancy loss, and foster a healthier postpartum experience.

Check out this episode on the blog HERE: https://postpartumu.com/how-to-naturally-increase-fertility-through-your-postpartum-recovery-with-tenaj-ikner-ep-186


Why Listen?
Unlock the Power of Pre-Pregnancy Prep: Learn how addressing trauma, reducing toxins, and replenishing nutrients can improve your chances of conception and enhance postpartum recovery.

Mindset, Community, and Health: Discover the importance of mindset, community support, and gentle practices like the “Wednesday waddle” in preparing your body and mind for pregnancy and postpartum.

Expert Fertility Guidance: Gain access to Tenáj’s expert strategies on reducing toxic exposure, optimizing nutrition, and fostering emotional well-being for a more empowered journey into motherhood.

What’s In It for You?
If you're on a fertility journey or supporting women in postpartum recovery, this episode is essential. Maranda and Tenáj delve into the vital role of pre-pregnancy care, including how addressing emotional trauma, detoxing from toxins, and improving nutrition can lay the foundation for a successful pregnancy and healthier postpartum. Learn personalized strategies to reduce the risk of pregnancy loss and enhance long-term maternal health.

Connect with Tenáj
Tenáj Ikner is a certified Perinatal Doula, Childbirth Educator, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist, Postpartum Transition Coach, Fertility Health Coach, and Naturopathic Practitioner with over a decade of experience in the perinatal health industry. Through her business, Elevate Maternity, she provides compassionate, personalized support to women navigating fertility, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
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Don’t miss this essential episode packed with crucial health information and practical advice. Visit www.postpartumu.com for more details and join us next week for more empowering content. If you found today’s episode helpful, please leave a review and share your thoughts. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and refine our content. Thank you for your support!

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Speaker 1:

Depression, anxiety and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it's supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I'm here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I'm Miranda Bauer, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist, obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body and soul in the years after birth. Hey, everyone, quick note, this episode is on fire, but I'm going to tell you we had a few recording snafus so it might sound a little funny, but bear with me. It is such good info that I knew you had to have it and I wanted to make sure that you got it anyway. So bear with us, you'll love it. Stay tuned, listen in.

Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to the postpartum university podcast and I have an episode here that I'm so thrilled to have, with tanaj eichner, who is a certified perinatal duda, a doula, childbirth educator, postpartum nutrition specialist, postpartum nutrition specialist, postpartum transition coach, fertility health coach oh my word and naturopathic practitioner. She has over a decade of experience in the perinatal health industry and she operates her own business, elevate Maternity. She provides passionate, realized, personalized support to help women fertility and pregnancy, and birth and postpartum and her approach is on empowering moms with confidence and clarity and non-judgmental care, because, oh my word, do we need that in today's world to really help them thrive in motherhood?

Speaker 2:

Tanaj, I'm so, so glad you're here motherhood, tanaj, I'm so, so glad you're here. Hi, thank you for having me. First of all, I've been a silent fan of your work for years at this point and I'm so, so blessed and grateful to be able to, like, have been through your program and learned from you and now, getting to you know, speak with you and be in front of you, know your audience, which is an honor. So thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

Of course, I just got goosebumps. Oh, my goodness. Okay, I really want to get into this conversation and really pick your brain, because you are such an expert in this, but you talk a lot about how necessary it is to prepare, like to prepare for pregnancy before you actually get pregnant. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so a lot of times what we find and at least what I've found in my community and like general area, is that one, as we know, it's getting harder and harder for women to just become pregnant. I know that when I was in my 20s, having kids, if you looked at me like I would get pregnant, and now that's not quite the case. What we're finding is that, you know, people are trying for years to get pregnant and it's just not happening. Or they get pregnant and then they're suffering loss and it's honestly, I think, because of the the level of like toxicity that we're exposed to, the lifestyle that we have, that it's just becoming that much more difficult for us to conceive. Honestly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I know all of us and I share this very openly and publicly none of them were planned. So I've got four kids, none of them which I have planned for, which I am very, very blessed to have experienced, but also that was hard. And I also know that a good solid like 50% of pregnancies are really not planned and I'm wondering, now that you mentioned that, if those numbers are dwindling.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, I think that the numbers of unplanned pregnancies I mean pregnancies in general are dwindling, right, those numbers are just going down further and further. I think, honestly, with unplanned pregnancies I would say that they are isolatedly dwindling. I think it's just pregnancies as a whole. 50% of pregnancies are unplanned and, unfortunately, because we're not properly preparing our bodies for those pregnancies, even those pregnancies are being lost and I really think that if we were to do a better job, frankly, even in our team, you know, just preparing our bodies in a healthy manner to hold on to our reproductive health and being taught the proper tools, diets, techniques to hold on to that and see it as a precious thing, that you know at this point in time is not even necessarily guaranteed to us, thing that you know at this point in time is not even necessarily guaranteed to us that we would be better. Even if we did have, like in your case, an unexpected pregnancy, our bodies would be well prepared to you mentioned properly preparing for pregnancy.

Speaker 2:

Like what is? What does that mean? How do you do that? Well, we know that we are exposed to toxins just in our existence, right Like there's no way to get around, that it doesn't matter. You'd have to be in a bubble and you'd have to be conceived in a lab, essentially to not be exposed to any level of toxicity.

Speaker 2:

And minimizing our toxic load, trying to do the best that we can with digestion, optimizing our bodies in that way, trying to eat as holistically as we possibly can, aside from, you know, growing our own food and doing all of those things with you know which people in my community are not as apt to do but just making sure that we're doing better, that we're making as good of a choice as we possibly can within the means that we have to try to keep those toxic levels low.

Speaker 2:

And then, of course, we're talking about, like, nutritional depletion. Most of us are depleted in some shape, form or fashion. Our food is not as nutritional dense as it once was, and so a lot of times, what we're finding is not only are we not eating the right foods, but the foods that we are eating are not benefiting us in a manner that is that they should be, not to mention the fact that a great majority of us have some form of like gut dysbiosis, and so, even if we're trying to eat the right things, our guts are not properly established to even take the nutrition that we're putting into our bodies, even with the best intentions.

Speaker 1:

It feels like, when you're talking about all of these things, like, wow, there's. There's just so much that we really need to consider, and I think even so much more now in today's world, with this surge of women who are really not able to get pregnant I don't know if you saw this fact recently, but I saw by the year 2050, we are all going to need help getting pregnant by external forces me- going to a provider?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I haven't seen that. And you know, honestly, at this point, the way that we're going. I would even bet that it would be sooner than that, because we are exposed to again going back to so much toxicity and the way that we're eating and the standard American diet, which we all know is, like, not ideal by any means. It just keeps getting worse and, like I said, I would gather that we would be there a little bit sooner than 2050, unfortunately. But you know, there are people out there like me, there's naturopaths out there that are doing the work to make sure that we are well educated and optimizing our bodies in a natural way so that we can conceive naturally.

Speaker 2:

And then, too, you know, we focus a lot on female reproductive but like 50% of infertility cases are because of the men and a lot of times we stay on the brunt of that responsibility, which is really, really unfortunate and it's I mean, it's really bad, even just for our mental health. And so for me, like in my practice, I do my very best to see if I can get partners on board to go along that journey with them. We're doing detoxification and the healthy eating and trying to reduce EMF exposure and all of those things, because it takes two to tango, literally right, and a baby is conceived with two cells, and so we're only half of the equation. We're a big part of the equation, half of it in the beginning, yes, so, so true.

Speaker 1:

So for those who are like listening and maybe they're struggling with fertility or maybe they're a provider and they work with they're seeing this on the rise, like, if you're a provider, you already know, like what we're saying here is accurate. You're seeing your clients struggle, they're wanting to conceive, they're not able to or they are, and then they they lose the pregnancy early on. Like, what are your top tips for them? You know, obviously we've got nutrition is really fundamental and we've got detoxing, but like, what are some practical things that people can do to?

Speaker 2:

do those things. Mindset is a huge thing, really really big, and a lot of times we don't even enter into this motherhood journey with the proper mindset, how we think all of that energy plays a part, with the proper mindset, how we think all of that energy plays a part. Energy, you know, whether we realize it or not, has a response emotionally and our emotions then affect our physical body. And so if we start with that, if we start to try to do our very best to reduce our stress, making sure that we're getting outside in nature and grounding I know a lot of times people are you know they say it as a diss on social media go touch grass, but like that's a real thing and that's something that we should be doing. As you know, a daily practice is getting out and just grounding with the earth and getting our nervous systems balanced and aligned, and so that's one of the first things that I would say.

Speaker 2:

And then, obviously, nutrition. Nutrition is the foundation for many, many things We've got. Exercise and fitness is also really important. Moving our bodies is something that we overlook because we're busy and we don't have time, but honestly, 15 minutes is not that long in a 24 hour day and you can squeeze that in anywhere. It's not about, like you know, hitting the gym and lifting heavy weights, but even just a nice brisk walk to get your heart rate is beneficial. And then I always come back to supplementation, and the reason for that is because we are so depleted, and it's it's there. There is no way to consume enough calories in the day to meet the levels of nutritional need that we actually need in this time, this day and time, without supplementation. So that's like the final piece for me, that that I always like to drive home with my clients.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think the key component there, too, is like not only are you trying to meet the needs of what you're currently like need in a given daily period, but also like you're trying to make up for what you've been lacking in for many of us for years and years, and years, for a lifetime in some instances.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely. Another component and I don't know if you see this often in the work that you do is how many women have experienced some form of trauma around motherhood and how that absolutely prevents them from getting pregnant.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so with trauma, trauma is one of those things that it's it's. It's really difficult to do anything right If our again going back to that mindset, if our mindset is not right. And so being able to heal or maybe not even necessarily heal, but to be able to manage our response to our traumatic experiences is really important, and those are tools that most of us just don't have. And so, with that being said, dealing with that first which goes back to mindset and emotions, being able to deal with that first, a lot of times, if you find or what I find is, if you deal with that first, it does, in essence, unlock some things.

Speaker 2:

It's very similar to women who are in that last stage of their pregnancy and they're preparing for birth and they're like in that 39, 40 week place and will go past date. And the question is, like holding you back it's not necessarily that you are just stuck for the sake of being stuck. Sometimes there's a fear or there is some sort of trauma that we need to deal with and you find, when you deal with that, that woman will go into labor and it's almost like magic. So I tend to think that the same thing happens in all of these different phases from fertility, pregnancy and postpartum is we can deal with. That. It will unlock our bodies to be able to do and deal and manage with that next phase, wherever we are.

Speaker 1:

Hey, I'm going to be 100% straight with you. The postpartum world is changing right now and I know you feel it. It's in the politics, our community spaces. There is an urgent need to implement a different approach to postpartum health. If you're an alternative provider or postpartum advocate, you need to be with us in the Postpartum University. Pro Membership Get the method, the tools, the handouts, the advanced trainings and so much more to not only help your clients and your business grow, but to help you grow too. Marketwatch says that the afterbirth services and nutrition and support is set for extraordinary growth by 2030. Don't miss your opportunity to help women and families who desperately need your holistic support. Go to wwwpostpartumucom. Slash membership. We're accepting registrations right now and we can't wait to see you there.

Speaker 1:

The reason I asked is I had this recently come up for someone. I had shared a post very recently about taking care of our bodies and I guess it resonated. She messaged me and said you know what, miranda, I'm getting the sleep, I'm taking the herbal supplements, I've detoxed my body like three different times, I've seen the professionals and I'm trying to get pregnant with my second and I can't. And I asked her very, very kindly, like okay, you're doing all the right things. Right, like, for one, let's just sit for a moment and just like honor all the work that you have already done to get here and two, could there be some sort of trauma or some sort of thing that's really holding you back? And she said, my gosh, could that really be? Like? How did you know that?

Speaker 1:

I was like, well, I mean, I've been through it, right, like this is, yeah, this is part of the journey. And she said I never realized how difficult and traumatic the first birth experience was, and till I started wanting to have another. And she's, like it's been on the back of my mind, like I can't do that again. And I said, okay, when you're ready to face that and your body will get pregnant, like. She messaged me like three months later and was like, guess what? No, it's such a beautiful thing, but it's such an important of fertility, right, like our minds are powerful.

Speaker 2:

Powerful. Yeah, they, yes, absolutely. One of the practices that a coach of mine actually had me go through when I was stuck was she told me to use my non-dominant hand and to write a letter to myself. And I mean, you know I'm right handed, left handed, writing is not easy and a letter nonetheless. Me to write a letter to myself in regard to, kind of like, what I thought was getting me stuck where I was because I had that same kind of story where I was like I'm doing all of the right things, I'm showing up, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but there's something that's just not happening. And so back to that first thing where I'm talking about mindset, where she's like write this letter to yourself. And she said, after you write that letter with the same dominant hand or non-dominant hand, I want you to write a response to what you wrote originally.

Speaker 2:

And she said be prepared for tears. And when I tell you I wrote that and I did shed a tear and it unlocked a lot of things for me, and it it taps you into your subconscious mind and pulls things out that you're not even aware are there. And so, after she had me do that, I was like this is brilliant, because it's not enough sometimes to just ask the questions, right, because we're in this mind and it's like no, there's really not anything. But when you tap into that subconscious or unconscious place, it pulls out the things that we've buried deep, deep, deep down, that we are just putting aside in order to, like, survive in the time and the space that we're in so that we can continue to move forward. So, yeah, it's. I mean, it all starts with mindset, ultimately, and then you move into those other things, those other four pillars for me.

Speaker 1:

And then you move into those other things and what you're, what you're providing to your clients, cause I don't often see that and I know that the change is taking place. I think that's the beautiful thing is that we're seeing it, it's happening, people are starting to recognize, but I feel it's still like kind of like the underground, like what we're saying is like super underground. It's still a little you know woo, like you mentioned, like you know what was the saying, the hug the grass. Or like you know, go touch the grass. Like hug a tree.

Speaker 1:

I think I got um, but like and how people make fun of things like that, right, and I'm sure that there's people out there saying, you know trauma, like whatever, I could still get pregnant, you know, and and that might be true, but at the same time, like for so many people, like these are the fundamental things that are so necessary. And it's always interesting to me and this is how my brain works, like if somebody is laughing at it, I need to pay attention. And it's always interesting to me and this is how my brain works. Like, if somebody's laughing at it, I need to pay attention. If somebody's saying this is woo, if Google is telling me this is wrong. I need to listen, I need to. Like, you know, it could be, it could be wrong, it could be not accurate, right, but I the listening. Part of the second could there be? Maybe this could be, you know, um, it just opens up another world of possibilities.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure. I think I'm probably one of the least like woo people out there. I want to say that that's probably more because of my, my faith. So I'm very careful to, like you know, move into things that are perceivably woo. But a lot of times what we think is that, like woo stuff is really science. Um, it's just that we're not digging into the science and the science is not um at the forefront of things. Um, like when we're talking about like frequency where you work and all of those things, we are energy. That is scientific fact, and so a lot of us are scared to like embark on, embrace those things, those concepts. But at the end of the day, it's just science. And if you're afraid of Wu, just keep it there and you'll be good.

Speaker 1:

So true, so true, and I have even been a part of circles that are putting Christianity and faith based into the Wu categories as well, because it's not scientific and it's like now we're crossing some boundaries and understanding what is really science and not right, and like quantum physics is a whole thing. Energy, like you know oh my gosh, I can talk on that for ages. Oh my gosh, I can talk on that for ages. But I really want to get into, okay, preparing for fertility and like preparing for pregnancy. And I think that there's another component to this, because not only is it so beneficial to do that, to get pregnant and to have a healthy pregnancy and potentially even a healthy birth outcomes, but I'm also wondering how does that impact postpartum? If we're giving our bodies the opportunity to prepare for fertility and pregnancy at this next level, like, what does it mean for us long-term?

Speaker 2:

I mean you you I'm sure already know this but when we're preparing for fertility right, we're eliminating the toxins, we're giving our bodies again that nutrient. We're repleting essentially our bodies with the vitamins, minerals and things that we're depleted of that we're lacking. As we move into pregnancy, that requirement goes up Right, because now we're nourishing, nurturing a baby and if we continue to give our body what it needs and provide the nutrients and the nutrition that our body needs as we move into postpartum, we are not entering in depleted to then further be depleted as we come into this postpartum journey. I mean, it's wild to me when I learned you know that, and it was through your program, honestly when I learned about the crazy amount of deletion that women are experiencing when they enter into postpartum and I've had three babies and I had, you know, autoimmune conditions and all of these things, and it was because I wasn't taking care of my body well before I even conceived I didn't even understand that that was a thing.

Speaker 2:

So if we're taking care of our bodies before, we are now preparing ourselves to be able to better handle the slight depletions, because as long as we are giving our body what it needs, the depletion is not going to be as detrimental.

Speaker 2:

And then, if we continue to eat the foods that are optimized for postpartum, that our bodies can best handle not eating all of the junk and crap that we typically eat because we're celebrating that we just had a baby and, like you know, all of these things our bodies are then able to bounce back right from that postpartum stage, and it's not about bouncing back and losing weight. It's about bouncing back that we are able to better manage and handle because our bodies have the nutrition, the vitamins, the minerals that it needs to be able to continue to not only sustain our life but that of our baby, if we are, you know, or whatever the case may be. So it takes time to dig ourselves out of the holes that we typically find ourselves in, and if we're doing the prep on the front end, by the time we get to the other side, the hole is not so deep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. And there's a whole detox component too, right, like if we're detoxing our bodies before pregnancy, or your body in pregnancy doesn't do a whole lot of detoxing in order to hold on to that. Pregnancy and postpartum is a mass detox phase, right, because we are bleeding, we are sweating profusely, like there's so much that is exiting our bodies as normal. It's part of the normal detoxification pathways opening up and the less toxins that we have, the less discomfort, the less that we have to release, which is, in so many ways, so beautiful. I mean, we can go on in many different avenues in that conversation, but I really want to ask you you take on a lot of one-on-one clients and for anybody who's listening in and saying okay, if I do need help and I hire Tanaj, how can she help me create a fertility plan that also includes overall long-term health, including postpartum health, like how do you, how do you work?

Speaker 2:

in that way. Well, it depends on what they come to me with. If we're many, many women have, like PCOS and endometriosis and all of those things. More specifically, pcos, which is an insulin issue. So where we start with that is cleaning up the diet. I will ask them like a full set of questions about their, their lifestyle, their jobs, their home environment, what their relationship with their partner is like. I ask a ton of questions so that I know where I'm starting and like how deep that rabbit hole goes and then from there, depending on the time that someone's coming to me in and when they're wanting to conceive whether it's naturally or through IVF or IUI we will set up a plan and that plan almost always will start with some sort of detoxification because we need to clean the body up. It's not this like super heavy detox, it's this really gentle, like 21 day cleanse. If I have enough time, we'll run through that twice and then I'm giving them the tools to make sure that they are eating well and it's not about just you know I eat good. We get real specific on it. Ideally you're cutting out gluten, maybe dairy, depending. You know we're really cleaning up that diet. They get lists from me about how to clean up their pantry, how to detox their house, what things they can, and you know, remove. I'm not about perfection and I understand that a lot of that can be very overwhelming, so I try to simplify that process for them so that it doesn't feel overwhelming and something that somebody is not going to want to do, because I know for me if it's too hard I'm not doing it, and so that's the first thing. And then I do check-ins with them over the period of time, but by that point they have a solid family.

Speaker 2:

Depending on, again, how long I have to work with them, then we just continue to do those things. We make sure that the supplementation is good. We're working on mindset. I have a fitness expert that I love to work with that I'm always asking questions about, you know, proper exercise and things like that that I can pass on to them.

Speaker 2:

Even in my community I do something called the Wednesday waddle, and so women that are, you know, pregnant, postpartum and even in fertility, we come together and we walk this 3.18 mile walk just to get people out and get into community. So those are the things that we do in the beginning, and then that typically cleans the body up and hopefully within that timeframe we've also cleaned up some of the mind so that they are more able to be, you know, consider or even try to conceive at that point, and most of the time we have some sort of success that comes with that. I don't ever guarantee outcomes because I can't do that, but even if you know pregnancy is not achieved, at the end of the day you have, you know, a different level of health that you have left me with. If we're not, yeah, that's gorgeous.

Speaker 1:

And for many of you who are listening in. I get so many messages and people asking have a provider directory or something like who can I recommend? And Tanaj is trained in postpartum universities, so if you're looking for some support, she is a go-to Tanaj. Thank you so much. Where can people find you and connect in with?

Speaker 2:

you, my website is elevate maternitycom. That's the main place. Other than that, on social media, i'mvate Maternity across all things on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter Do we still call it Twitter, I don't even know anymore, but there it's Elevate, so it's E-L-E-V, the note maternity, but for the most part, elevate Maternity.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful and of course, we will have all of that in the show notes. Thank you so so much for being here.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you, thank you, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We've hoped you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review. And, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you've learned here, applied it to your own life and consider joining us in the Postpartum University membership. It's a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years postpartum. You can learn more at wwwpostpartumucom. We'll see you next week.